


The roads we take

by Apuzzlingprince



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Blood, Eventual Fiddlestan, Gen, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective!Stanford
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-14 20:51:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4579620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apuzzlingprince/pseuds/Apuzzlingprince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stanford finds a parcel on his doorstep and sees Stanley for the first time in ten years. This isn't a reunion he could have anticipated, and it certainly isn't one that he wanted. (A/N: the hard drive containing a further 40k words of this story died on me. I know a lot of people are interested in seeing this continued, but after losing so many chapters, I don't have the will to continue it. Sorry guys!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: There's a lot of angst and unpleasant themes to come!  
> Beta(s): Huge thanks to Poweredsugarfrost and Hermitlikecrab for working with my on this! You guys are rad!

He wasn’t in his bed.

This was the first thing to cross Stanley’s mind as he awoke. He could only vaguely recall having opened his eyes, and before him was a vast field of black. Something had congealed beneath his nose and his mouth was sticky and sore. His breaths came out in short snorts.

 _You’re bleeding,_ his mind groggily informed him. _You’re bleeding, and there’s duct tape on your mouth._

The sound of an engine started to register. He could feel the gentle thrumming reverberating through to his bones. He closed his eyes again, briefly, and tried to orientate himself.

_I’m in the trunk of a car. Why-?_

He twisted, the bare skin of his arms sliding against rough fabric and metal – a container, it felt like, and some equipment scattered throughout the trunk. He eventually managed to maneuver himself onto his stomach, squashing his bound hands with his bulbous belly. They were tied with something much harder than duct tape. He touched the tips of his fingers to the outside of his bindings and immediately recognized them as handcuffs. He didn’t have any hair pins on him, so there was nothing he could do about them at the moment.

He slid his hands up to his face, fumbling for a loose edge of the duct tape and ripping it off in short, hesitating tugs. A few whiskers came loose as he did. Taking in a few stuttering breaths of air, he willed his racing, adrenaline-addled mine to remember what had happened. The car creaked as he moved, and he recalled crickets. A hot summers evening had drawn crickets to sparse patches of grass outside his apartment. A chirping melody, interrupted by fists thundering against his front door. Running, the thud of pursuing footsteps, and then ringing in his ears.

He squeezed his eyes shut. It was hot, and his body was warming with anxiety. His pulse raced enough to make his heartbeat echo through his ears.

“Hey, you hear that?” Rico’s voice, just outside the trunk.

“Yeah, he’s moving around in there. He’s awake.” That was one of Rico’s goons, and he was just close enough to be intelligible. Stanley instinctively shrunk towards the back of the trunk and in his desperation, started to gnaw on the metal chain that linked his handcuffs. It was a vain effort, and he knew it.

“Yeah, well-” A slurry of Spanish. This, Stanley couldn’t understand. He’d never bothered to learn New Mexico’s native language, but he didn’t need to know it to realize what Rico had said, as the trunk was unlocked and pulled open a moment later. There was a single street lamp towering over the car, outlining Rico and his men a rustic yellow. Rico’s face was cast in and out of shadow as the embers of a cigar he was puffing away at lit up with each inhale.

“You got the room ready?”

“Been ready for days, boss.”

“Good. Give the boys a call, tell them we’re bringin’ him in.”

As Stanley’s eyes adjusted to the light, he could finally identify the disarray surrounding him. It looked like the contents of a garage; hammers of varying shapes and sizes, a stray blowtorch, hedge trimmers, little boxes of different types of nails, and knives haphazardly wrapped in dirty linen. Despite the heat, Stanley’s face managed to drain of colour as he examined them further; there was enough dried blood on each of them for him to know exactly what Rico and his goons intended to use them for.

A hand curled tight around a fistful of his messy brown hair, yanking until his torso was hanging out of the trunk, and he yelped.

“My friend.” Smoke rolled over his face as Rico exhaled. His lips had parted into a yellow-toothed grin. “You are in very, _very_ big trouble.”


	2. The Parcel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stanford finds a parcel on his doorstep and sees Stanley for the first time in ten years. This isn't a reunion he could have anticipated, and it certainly isn't one that he wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: There's gore in this chapter, guys!

Stanford Pines didn’t often receive mail. He had few reasons for correspondences, and scarcely even received letters from his parents. Isolation was a commodity for someone like Stanford, who valued his privacy and solitude. So it was a surprise when a parcel, wrapped in thick brown paper and kept together with scotch tape, showed up on his doorstep. He was cautious when he went to retrieve it. Having made himself aware to the more unearthly inhabitants of Gravity Falls, he had become something of a target for pranks, especially from those damn gnomes, who had tried to eat him when he had last run into (or rather, been captured by) them.

The parcel seemed innocent enough. He brought it into his lounge room and sat down, switching on the television for some background noise while he unwrapped it. He tore through each layer of brown paper with growing excitement and unease, and wasn’t disappointed when he finally unveiled a strange little black box. A number pad was on the top, and a screen on the front, as well as a phone cable and a slip of paper containing instructions. A toy from Fiddleford, maybe?

What a funny little box it was. He’d never seen anything quite like it, and the instructions that came with it provided little insight into what it was:

_Attach cable to phone. Input numbers._

Scribbled below in large arching letters was a phone number. And even if the handwriting hadn’t been completely foreign, it was most definitely not Fiddleford’s number. He flipped the paper over, but there was nothing on the back to elucidate the purpose of this ‘gift’.  Fortunately, Ford had always been fond of mysteries, so the lack of information provided only made it more tantalizing. He switched off the television and moved to sit in the chair he kept by the telephone. He plugged the cable in as instructed, and pushed the phone aside so he could set the queer little box in its place.  

He carefully input the phone number and set the receiver against his ear, watching the screen for signs of life. What he had been anticipating was not what popped up on screen. It was a flickering, poor-quality black and white image of a man’s face, his mouth curved into a smile that reached dark eyes, drawing crows-feet into the edges. A white, puckered scar stood out on his forehead, and his five o'clock shadow seemed to be developing into a beard.

It being the 80’s, and accustomed to a certain level of quality in his television, Stanford was unimpressed with the travesty that stared back at him. Portable or not, something this small and inferior wouldn’t be able to keep his attention for even a short period of time. Besides, he preferred to listen to the radio when on the move, despite how often he was told it was ‘dying out’.  

“I’m speaking to Stanford Pines, yes?”

In his disappointment, he’d almost forgotten he had the receiver pressed to his ear. But that wasn’t the startling part. He was well-accustomed to the phone and the wonders of audio communication, having grown up with it. What he wasn’t accustomed to was watching a person’s lips on a television screen move in time with the words coming from his receiver. His jaw had become slack and he didn’t even have the presence of mind to be embarrassed about it.

“Never heard of the picturephone, aye, Pines? Wasn’t real popular, but here in New Mexico, we value face to face communication, so the big pins nabbed a few while they were on a decline.”

So that’s what it was. A picturephone. He wasn’t surprised to have missed this particular innovation, having attended a college that didn’t stock enough typewriters for its students on its best days, and didn’t even have enough writing utensils to do things by hand on its worst.

He wondered, briefly, if the man was able to see him, but that question was inadvertently answered as the man continued to speak.

“Don’t put down the receiver, amigo. This video feed is one-way, and I’m gonna need you on the line for what’s going to happen next.”

He obliged more out of curiosity than any desire to follow the man’s instructions. He pinned the receiver between his neck and shoulder, adjusting the screen so he could better see what the man was doing as he retreated out of view. The screen abruptly shifted, becoming a disorientating blur of black and white. When it came to a stop, it settled on a hunched figure crowded by a group of burly men. That alone would have concerned him, but the tarp beneath the figure had his stomach lurching and his hands reaching to turn the screen off.

“Mr. Pines, you must be wondering what this scene is, and why I’m showing it to you.” His fingers hesitated over the power button. The man he’d spoken to earlier wasn’t in sight, but he could see his shadow off to the left of the screen. The arm of it motioned, and the men kicked the figure over onto its back.

“Stanley!” Ford immediately cried. His twin brother was in the fetal position, and curled up so tight that Stanford was afraid for a moment that they had already done something to him. But Stanley jerked at the sound of his name, looking around wildly for the source. He was awake and aware, although noticeably drugged. Some sort of sedative. He didn’t seem to recognize that there was an electronic quality to the voice that had spoken his name.

But he did seem to recognize the owner. “Ford!” He sluggishly tried to crawl out from the group, only to be thwarted by a boot shoving his face hard into the tarp. “F-Ford! Run! Fuck, you’ve got to—” He was silenced by that same boot moving to stomp on his chest instead, but was still mouthing the words when the boss started to speak over him.

“I never introduced myself, did I? I’m Rico, and these are my boys.”

Two of his ‘boys’ raised a hand in greeting, while the others merely grinned.

“They’re going to put on a little show for you tonight. But, good news: you get to decide what we do.”

Stanford swallowed, his throat now as dry as sandpaper. “I-I’ll give you money, I can give you money. Please don’t—“

“Mr. Pines, this is more than just a matter of money.”

The shadow started to recede, replaced by the man himself, stepping over to the sluggishly struggling, distressed Stanley. Rico knelt down beside him, raking his hands through his hair and down his neck, eliciting a full-body shudder.

“It’s a matter of pride. Your brother here has caused me quite a bit of trouble, quite a lot of money, and if I weren’t in the good graces of one of the most powerful men in the country, I would probably be _dead_ right now. All thanks to slick over here. I had to chase his sorry ass all over New Mexico.”

“But I have thousands of dollars, I have a grant that—“

“I don’t care.” Rico held up a finger to forestall interruption. “Again, Mr. Pines, this is a matter of pride. You can send that money if you really want to. It might persuade me to let your brother live, but that isn’t guaranteed, and you brother won’t be returned to you whole, anyway, so I really don’t recommend it.”

Ford was glad the screen wasn’t two-way, because there were tears rimming his eyes when he wiped a hands over his face in exasperation. There had to be something he could offer, something that would mean more to this man than pride. Maybe he could offer him some _one_ else— and god, that was a horrible, selfish thought, but this was his _brother_ , and one stranger’s life meant relatively little to him if he could save Stanley.

“Is there anyone else, anyone I could trade him for?”

Rico guffawed. “Oho, Stan always talked you up like you were a goddamn saint, but I guess you two really are twins after all!” He gave Stanley’s hair a jovial sort of ruffle. “I like a little corruption in my men- comfort in familiarity an’ all- but there ain’t anyone else who has stung me as bad as your idiot brother. Still, I’m sure he’d appreciate the sentiment, if he weren’t practically shittin’ his pants right now.”

Rico roughly turned Stanley’s face towards the screen, putting his wide, glassy eyes on display. It took an incredible amount of self-control not to look away.

“Anyway, I think we’ve wasted enough time with introductions. It’s time t’ get this party started. Boys?”

“Wait, please—“ A last, futile attempt.

“Let’s start with something practical. Your brother’s going to start being a pain in the ass, soon. So, should we break his legs, or should we break a few ribs?”

One of the thugs tossed him a thick, metal hammer, ready for use.

“You have ten minutes to decide, or we do both.”

* * *

Stanley loved to run. In their childhood races to the swing set, or the beach, or the Stan o’ War, Stan had always come out victorious, because Stan had always loved to run. Maybe he had become less fond it over the ten years they had been estranged, but he didn’t doubt that Stan still took pleasure in running. Still considered his strength his greatest asset. There wouldn’t be much strength left in those legs of his if Rico’s gang was allowed their way with them, and he knew, even if they did heal, they would never be quite the same. And that would devastate Stanley.

To have a couple of ribs broken seemed like the better option, but then there was the possibility of internal bleeding, of a lung being pierced, of them getting a little too into enacting their revenge and damaging Stanley’s heart. He didn’t know if it was worth the risk to save Stanley’s legs. There was eight minutes left, and he didn’t know what Stanley would _want_.

He suddenly felt a swell of indignation; why did _he_ have to be dragged into this? What had he done to deserve this? Then guilt followed, because Ford he already knew the answer to that without even thinking about it; they wanted Stanley to feel responsible for his own suffering, as well as the suffering of his brother. They wanted to be intimate about the hurt they inflicted. It was easy to torture a man, but to force a loved one take part in it… from a sociopath's perspective, the plan was brilliantly devised.

“Three minutes, Mr. Pines.”

Stanford inhaled sharply, caught off guard. With reluctance, he returned his gaze to the sight of his brother curled up on the tarp. There was more awareness in his eyes now, and a greater degree of defiance. He felt insurmountably proud of his brother when he saw that.

“Two minutes. Have you made your decision?”

“Is there no chance of being able to convince you to take something else? Anything else?” He had to ask. Just one more time.

“Si, no chance. You could offer me a million dollars and I… well, I’d mull it over, but I would probably still kick the shit out of your brother, and I know you don’t have a million dollars.”

Ford’s hands began to shake. From anger, rather than fear. He closed his eyes, inhaling unsteadily.

“Legs.” he said at last.

He opened his eyes to watch. He wasn’t going to let Stanley go through this alone. He had to watch.

Rico murmured something in Spanish, and it must have been ‘hold him down’, because one man pinned Stanley’s wrists above his head while another held his ankles apart. Stanley arched and twisted in their grip, but he wasn’t able to dislodge himself. He began to breathe hard and fast.  Ford could see the rapid rising and falling of his chest beneath his dirty jacket.

Rico approached the screen, reaching out. His fingers obscured the scene, reducing Ford's view to patches of trembling grey. When they pulled away, the device was positioned in such a way that Ford was given a perfect view of Stanley’s agitated expression and restrained legs. His body was trembling like an aspen.

Ford curled his arms around his torso as way of restraining them. If he didn’t, he would cover his eyes the moment Rico threw down that large, heavy-looking hammer.

“You earned every bit of this, kid.” Rico spat at Stan, who curled his hands into fists and tried uselessly to take a swing at the man restraining his arms. “Say adios to your left leg.”

The hammer was brought up, and Stanley tried to curl his leg in, tried to maneuver it out of the line of fire, but it came down with a mighty twack of metal striking flesh, and the cracking that followed was unmistakably the sound of a bone fracturing. Stanley shrieked in agony, twisting and crying, his eyes now wide and clear of intoxication.

The hammer came down again, and again, with a sickening _crunch_! _Crack_! _Smack_!

Ford felt nausea clawing at the back of his throat as blood went splattering across the room with the final strike.

Stanley’s screaming gradually died down to breathy whimpers.

“Next leg,” Rico said loudly, perhaps just for the mortified look on Stanley’s face. He hobbled over Stanley’s ruined left leg, all splintered with bone and red with blood, and sat on his opposite side, now facing the camera. Rico set a hand on Stanley’s ankle to adjust its position, and his thug must have slackened his grip, because that leg suddenly flew out of the thug's hands and straight into Rico’s bulging gut. The man wheezed and let out a slew of foreign swear words, and the thug quickly wrestled Stanley’s leg back into position.

“Do your fucking job,” Rico snarled, smacking the man—young, couldn’t have been older than twenty-two—upside the head. He had managed to keep his grip on the hammer, and brought it down quite viciously and rapid-fire just above Stanley’s ankle. Ford immediately saw far too much white than he could tolerate and turned away from the screen, gagging in time with Stanley’s helpless bellowing screams.

Images of Stanley running full-throttle down the beach filled his mind. His mouth open wide in a grin and shrieking with laughter rather than pain as he dug his toes into the sand and kicked his way through the waves, yelling for Stanford to join him.

It was several minutes before the assault ended. When it did, there was a low chuckle from the receiver and complete silence from his brother. Panic stricken, he spun back around to face the screen. Stanley was motionless. Horror reared up and filled his mouth with the same foul taste that had flooded it moments prior, and then he noticed the slight rising and falling of his chest, the slight twitching of his bloodied limbs, and he covered his face with his hands to muffle a bout of relieved sobs.

He was okay. He was alive.

“You there, Mr. Pines?”

He composed himself before he set the phone back against his ear, swallowing wetly. “Y-yes. Still here.”

“Good.”

The hammer was still in Rico’s hand, dripping with fluid. Ford let himself turn away this time. It was over, and no one could see him shrink away from the sight of his brother’s mangled legs.

“Call us in eight hours. And I wouldn’t try contacting the police, Mr. Pines; believe me when I tell you it won’t do you any good.”

He peeked through his fingers just long enough to watch the screen go blank.


	3. From here, we stagger downhill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stanford finds a parcel on his doorstep and sees Stanley for the first time in ten years. This isn't a reunion he could have anticipated, and it certainly isn't one that he wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thank you all for the feedback! I read every single comment and appreciate every kudos!

He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he panicked. He tried re-dialling the number, then he tried pressing all the buttons on the machine. But nothing happened. Its connection capabilities seemed limited to devices of the same type, and he didn’t expect there were many still in operation, ‘ _Never heard of the picturephone, aye, Pines? Wasn’t real popular’_.

Any thoughts of calling the police were quickly dismissed; Rico was probably telling the truth about it being a futile effort, and what would happen to Stanley if they were to find out he had sought help? He didn’t expect Stanley would be alive long enough to be retrieved. Even if it _had_ seemed a good idea, Gravity Fall’s local law enforcement didn’t exactly inspire confidence. The few people they had on station were more likely to exacerbate Stanley’s situation than help him, and had done exactly that to numerous other people while servicing the town.

There were more reliable stations he could call, but there was a good chance that still wouldn’t lead to Stanley’s retrieval. Rico had mentioned being in the good graces of one of the most powerful men in the country. He would have the resources needed to avoid capture, as well as kill Stanley within minutes of being told Stanford had squealed, and he was sure they would subject him to the slowest, most excruciating death they could manage on such short notice.

Stanford hadn’t noticed a cold sweat developing on his skin. He ran his palms up and down his goose-pimpled flesh and slowly rose out of his chair, legs wobbling like that of a new-born foal as he made his way through the shack and into his bedroom.

He needed to go to New Mexico. He needed to find Stanley.

Numb, he pulled out the backpack he brought with him on over-night adventures and began to stuff clothes inside. Little thought was expended while he prepared to leave for New Mexico, his mind busy calculating risks and possibilities. The last thing he shoved into his backpack was the picturephone, and that was on his way out the front door. The slip of paper containing the phone number was carefully folded and slid into his breast pocket, where it would be safe.

He had the forethought to throw a couple of gallons of fuel into the back of his car before he set off. It wasn’t the car he had originally brought to Gravity Falls, that one having been destroyed by a yet-to-be-identified beast upon his arrival. This car was smaller, more compact, almost like a buggy, and guzzled fuel with no regard for the steadily rising prices. It was a nippy little thing that went zipping down the road at breakneck speed when he stomped down on the accelerator.

The sun was setting, it was well past six and he had been busy at work all day, but he would drive until he was due to make the next call. After that, he would drive some more. His focus was on reaching New Mexico. He would worry about sleeping when he got there. 

Night was fast to arrive this time of year. He had to switch the headlights on within three hours of driving. His car had already guzzled almost the entire tank of fuel, and by the six hour point, he was pulling into a rest-stop to re-fill.  It was almost two in the morning. Just before four, he would have to make the call. He anxiously finished filling the tank, threw some coffee into his gullet to keep himself awake, and resumed driving.

The road was almost completely absent of life. Most people didn’t risk driving at night, especially on a road this infamous for deer impacts. He was lucky the road was absent of other vehicles, as that enabled him to drive across the line and out of the way of any deer that did happen to amble onto the asphalt.

Three fourty five came all too soon. He had stopped thirty minutes prior at a gas station so he would have access to a telephone,and paid the owner a hundred in cash to shoo him out of the room while he made the call.

It was the same as last time. Stanley lying on tarp, surrounded by burly men, and Rico kneeling at his side, a hand buried in his dirty brown hair. But his legs had been wrapped and splintered. An effort to keep him alive long enough to complete their game.

What little he could see of the room was almost completely the same. The same light hues, the same splash of white that suggested there was a bulb overhead. There was nothing that stood out, nothing that could clue Stanford into their location.

When Rico spoke, his first words were, “You’re early.” He didn’t sound angry about this. Amused, in fact. “Eager to get started? Because I sure am!”

Anger choked through Ford. His next words were involuntary, “I’ll kill you!” and he clamped his mouth shut immediately after, wincing in regret.

Rico merely laughed. He didn’t sound as if he thought anything of this threat. It was probably one he had heard numerous times before from people much more formidable than Stanford. This only made Ford angrier. His molars were audibly grinding, his knuckles white around the receiver.

“Oh, dios, you’re welcome to try, but if you’re anything like your brother here – and I’m told you’re even more pathetic than he is – you really shouldn’t be making such threats, little man.”

It was then that Stanford resolved to kill him. He would enact every torture inflicted on Stanley on this man and bury his still-bleeding body in the sand. He would make him die slowly, terror-stricken, blubbering, and Rico could beg and plead all he wanted, he could claim Stanford was a good man incapable of doing such things to another human being, but Stanford was suddenly acutely aware of how _wrong_ that assumption was.

He was going to drive to New Mexico, he was going to save Stanley, and he was going to hurt this man in ways so horrific that what they were doing to Stanley now would look like child’s play.  He breathed in deep before he responded. He needed to purge the anger from his voice.

“I mean it.” For the first time since their game had begun, his voice was stoic, and for the briefest of moments his quarry looked unnerved.

“Good luck, pal,” Rico scoffed. “You’re gonna need it.”

To that, Stanford said nothing. He settled back in his chair to watch Stanley being rolled onto his belly. The movement drew whimpers and whines, his broken legs tangling around each other. Rico walked over and roughly yanked them back into position.

He raised a hand expectantly. One of his men handed him a knife about the size of his palm. Small enough that, while it rose red flags, they weren’t ones that feared Stanley would be stabbed or have his extremities cut off. It was much too small for such a task. A blow-torch was handed to him next, and that was when Stanford began to sweat. A knife and a blowtorch – not a reassuring combination.

“Okay, Mr. Pines, you get to decide what we burn into his back.” He slid the knife up beneath Stanley’s jacket and undershirt, sawing through the fabric. The knife must have nicked his skin because Stanley wiggled and groaned. “You give us a three word phrase, something we approve of.” Before turning on the blowtorch, he wrapped the handle of the knife in some rags. He was careful to hold both items away from himself as he heated the blade. “Or we cut the skin right off his back.”

Stanley let out a series of shuddering breaths upon hearing that. This sound, seemingly insignificant, had Stanford shivering with rage. “I-I understand. Could you – could-“ He shakily retrieved the coffee he had ordered prior to making the call off the phone table and took a swig. He was tired. “Give me a suggestion of what you want to hear.”

“Very well.” Rico motioned for his goons to wipe Stanley’s back down with antiseptic. Another one of those measures taken to ensure Stanley would survive the torture long enough to finish their game. “Cheater, liar, something along those lines. Try not to make it too long. It’s a small canvas.” Rico grinned, and Ford swallowed hard.

The heat meant this was going to scar. Stanley would have these words written into his back for the rest of his life. He wouldn’t be able to take off his shirt without them being seen, and they would ache for months in reminder of what his own brother had let these people do to him. He might even think they were what Ford thought of him.

“Mr. Pines, I’m losing my patience…”

There was nothing coming to mind that was even remotely okay. But then, nothing being drawn into the skin of his brother’s back was going to be okay. He took another, much larger swig of his coffee.

“Manners maketh man.”

“What?”

“Manners maketh man.”

It was a saying he and Stanley had learned in primary school. Their teacher had once called them to the front of the classroom, scolded Stanley, and said ‘manners maketh man’. Neither of them had really understood what it meant at the time, nor had they cared. They had made a joke of it, repeating the phrase to each other in a high-pitched, whining voice whenever either one of them did something they deemed inappropriate, whether that be getting jam smudged on their shirt or throwing a paper plane at a classmate. Stanley would know its significance. These men wouldn’t.

Rico and his men exchanged confused glances. It clearly wasn’t something they had heard before. After a moment of unintelligible murmuring, Rico shrugged and flicked off the blowtorch, tossing it aside carelessly as he leaned over Stanley and picked a marker off the floor. He carefully wrote the letters onto Stanley’s back before he positioned the knife over Stanley’s shoulder blade, over the later ‘m’, and steadily tore the blade through the trembling flesh.

Stanley’s screams were quieter than before. It was unlikely he had been allowed to sleep during the eight hours Stanford had been made to wait. He was probably exhausted. He threw his head weakly from side to side, like an animal trying to distract itself from pain in the only way it knew how, and it was pathetic. Hard to watch. One of the thugs laughed and swiped Stanley’s hair back from his face, unveiling his tear streaked cheeks, and Ford had to look away.

Ford was exhausted himself. Emotionally and physically, and he couldn’t will himself to keep his eyes on the screen anymore. The receiver hung limp in his hand. Stanley’s screams were making his heart thrum painfully hard and fast in his chest and the rush of blood warmed his body, but he didn’t move, he didn’t face the screen, and he couldn’t will himself to. 

Activity bloomed from behind the door closest to him, pacing footsteps, a hand jiggling the handle, but Ford barely noticed. He was numb, listening to Stanley scream with his face set in a permanent, empathetic sort of grimace. Stanley’s voice was gradually lowering, becoming more guttural. It was only a matter of time before it died from over-use.

He wasn’t sure how long it was before Rico finally finished the task. It felt like hours had passed, but it was more likely to have been minutes. He wondered, vaguely, how long it had felt like to Stanley, who hadn’t had the good luck of passing out this time. When he finally lifted his head to look into the screen, Stanley was on his back, staring up at the ceiling, completely unresponsive. His chest still rose and fell, his eyelids blinked. Those little signs of life were reassuring.

Rico’s face soon obscured the view of his brother. “He’s a real trooper, your brother. Still struggled after we fucked up his legs! But I think we may have finally broken him.” He shook a thumb over his shoulder, grinning. “Wonder if he’ll survive the next eight hour intermission. I mean, he’s in pretty bad shame, amigo…”

Ford felt as if he had been doused with icy cold water. He slammed a fist onto the table, snapping into the receiver, “If you let him die, I swear to God-!”

“Hey, we’re makin’ an effort.” Rico shrugged, looking nonchalant. “If he doesn’t survive, he doesn’t survive. If he holds on for the entirety of the game, we’ll drop him off in the desert somewhere for you to find.”

Ford wanted to grab that screen and fling it into the wall. He wanted to hear it crash and shatter. It was the closest he could get to inflicting pain on this man, but he knew better than to risk Stanley’s life for a momentary satisfaction.

The line of his shoulders slowly untensed. He held his breath until he was lightheaded, and then responded. “Will my money – will it be enough to convince you to at least _try_ to keep him alive?”

“Eh…” The silence that followed wasn’t promising. “If you can cover what your brother owes us, that’ll be a start. S’ a few thousand dollars. Let’s round it up to, say… ten.”

Ten. His financial situation would be dire with that big a chunk of his grant gone, but he was willing to try anything to keep his brother alive. “How do you want to receive it? In person, or…?”

“Gives us your bank account details. An associate of ours will pick up the money.” Rico retreated from the camera and gave Stanley’s prone body a nudge with the toe of his boot. Stanley curled away from him, his back turned to the camera. The words ‘manners maketh man’ were shiny and dark, scrawled messily across his upper back. Ford suddenly wished they had never been brothers, if it meant Stanley would have been spared this pain.

“Isn’t that a bit…?”

“Aah, risky? For you? Yes.” A finger swiped over drying beaded blood surrounding one of the letters, smudging it. Stanley whimpered. “You’ll just have to trust us, won’t you?”

He had no choice. He’d made the offer, and if he tried to withdraw it now – which he most certainly wouldn’t – they would kill Stanley for sure. If he happened to lose all his money in the process of saving his brother, well… that was just a sacrifice he would have to learn to live with. He was a hard worker. He’d be able to get back on his feet the same way he had during his years at Backupsmore.

“Alright, my details-“

“No.” Rico reached for the screen. “Not now. Tomorrow. Eight hours.”

Ford picked up his now tepid coffee and hurled it at the wall. It brought the owner of the gas station running, but he merely picked up the picturephone, threw a couple hundred of bills at him, and left; he was going to be broke soon, anyway.

* * *

When Fiddleford answered the phone, he wasn’t able to identify the voice on the other end. It was shrill and desperate, completely unlike everything he had come to associate with Stanford Pines. The man was an asset to the academic world and a valued acquaintance, and the closest he had ever come to hearing him distressed was during a particularly intense session of DnD. It took Stanford speaking again, ‘Fiddleford? Buddy? Are you there?’ for him to finally realize who he was speaking to.

“Stanford?” He slid his banjo out of his lap, leaning it up against his work desk. “Is something the matter? I almost didn’t recognize you! You sounded like you’d seen a ghost!”

“Worse than that, actually. I’d prefer a ghost at this point.”

Fiddleford’s brow wrinkled in concern. “Has something happened? Maybe with your grant?”

“Yes, actually – but, no. No. That’s not what’s got me – like this. It’s my brother.” Ah, the infamous Stanley Pines. Stanford had always had little good to say about him, so he was anticipating something along the lines of ‘he broke in and stole all my money’ or ‘he’s been pretending to be me for the last ten years’.

“He’s been kidnapped by a gang in New Mexico. They’re torturing him every eight hours.”

…Well, he’d been way off the mark. Way, _way_ off the mark. So off the mark that he was rendered speechless.

Stanford cleared his throat, and Fiddleford finally managed a response, “I- I don’t know what you expect from me, Stanford. I don’t know what to tell you. Have you gone to the police?”

“I can’t.” A weary sigh from the other end of the line. “It would put him in even more danger.”

“I don’t think that’s possible if they’re _torturing_ him.”

“Trust me, it is.”

Fiddleford glanced across the garage and into his lounge room, where his son, Tate, was playing dinosaurs with the nanny. He was suddenly paranoid that their call was being eavesdropped on. “I’m not sure I want to get involved in this, if that’s what you’re callin’ for. I have a son.”

“You have a-? Fiddleford, _please_.” His voice was imploring. “I wouldn’t have called if I wasn’t in desperate need of help.”

“But why call _me_? Stanford, we…we weren’t _that_ close, and really, it wasn’t from lack of trying on _my_ end.” He felt bad to say so, but he ran a hand up through his hair and continued, voice low and calm. “Don’t you have _anyone else_ you could call? Someone better suited to this sort of thing?”

“I don’t. You’re the only one who can help me.” Fiddleford frowned. Stanford sure knew how to make a guy feel obligated.

He wiped a thumb beneath an eye, sighing audibly. “I don’t feel like I have much choice here. How involved do you intend me to get, exactly?”

“I don’t know yet. I need another mind to help sort out my thoughts.”

He had never known Stanford to ever need company to brainstorm, but he supposed this situation was quite a bit direr than anything their college had presented them with. 

“Do you at least have a vague plan to work off of?”

“Of course.” There was the sound of a notepad being flipped. “We combine our electronic prowess to trace the location of Stanley, and then… well…”

“Yes?”

“That’s the entirety of the plan, so far. I’m having trouble keeping focus.”

Fiddleford imagined anyone with a family member in peril would have a hard time keeping focus.

“That’s a good start. We can build a tracer. Expect it’d take a couple of hours with the right materials, and we’d only need to keep them on the line for, and I’m being generous here… ten minutes.”

“I can manage that. I don’t think we’ve had a call that hasn’t been at least twenty.”

“Good. But I’ll need you tell me what ‘we’ means, first. Does it mean I can help you over the phone, or do you need me there, physically? Because the drive to- where was it?”

“New Mexico.”

“The drive to New Mexico is sixteen hours, and that’s on a good day.”

“I can build it with a few tips over the phone, but I’ll need you here to help attach it to the device – they’ve got me using a picturephone, and I have no idea how to go about making them compatible. If you start driving now, I should only have a few hours on you when I arrive.”

“Oh lord, this is a terrible, terrible idea…”

Fiddleford couldn’t believe he was really going to do this. He’d never so much as snitched on someone in school, and now he was going to go head to head with a gang? He would need to take some precautions to ensure his sons safety; he and his wife had parted ways several months ago, so he didn’t need to worry about her. The nanny, though…? Perhaps it was best that he fired her and sent Tate to his grandparents for the time being.

He stood with the receiver still pressed to his ear. “You’re gonna owe me big for this, Stanford Pines.”

“You could always have my brother re-pay you. He could babysit your kid,” he joked, but made a guilty grunting sound immediately after. “Actually, I – I’m not sure he’ll be able to do much of anything, once we’ve retrieved him. The first thing they did was, uh… they smashed up his legs.” There was a couple of seconds hesitation before he asked, “Do people usually recover from that…?”

“I’m not sure,” Fiddleford said slowly, unsure as to what he could say that wasn’t a lie, but wouldn’t be discouraging. “I mean, there are professional sportsmen who recover from having serious fractures all over the show, so there’s a good chance your brother will be fine in that regard. He might have a bit of a limp, but – but he’ll be able to walk, probably.” He winced at the addition of ‘probably’. He should have omitted that.

“Thanks,” Stanford said. “I mean it, Fiddleford. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. I’m doin’ this reluctantly, after all, and I expect to be compensated somehow.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true, but you’re still doing it. Even if we don’t get Stanley back, even if we don’t manage to-“ His voice had started to fail on him.

Fiddleford quickly piqued up. “I’ve got a sixteen hour drive ahead of me, Stanford. I’d best be going. You take care of yourself, y’hear?”

“You too, buddy.” Stanford murmured back, his voice heavy with emotion.

As an afterthought, Fiddleford added, “We’ll meet at El Rey Inn. It’s the only place I’m familiar with.”

“Alright, sounds good.”

“Oh, an’ you’re gonna have to phone me on my portable. It’s my house number with one and six in front. You got that?”

The short ‘uh huh’ sound Stanford made suggested he wasn’t entirely sure what Fiddleford meant by ‘portable’, but with so little time to get ready, Fiddleford made no effort to explain. “Got it,” he said. “I’ll see you soon, then.”

Stanford was first to hang up the receiver. Fiddleford sat there for several long minutes, combing through the particulars of the conversation he had just had. Stanley Pines, kidnapped by a gang, being tortured every eight hours. With how distressed Stanford had sounded, it couldn’t be long before the next session. He had to hurry up and start moving if he wanted to get to New Mexico in time to save Stanford’s brother.

This was completely insane and he was going to curse Stanford Pines until the day he died for dragging him into it, but he’d always had too big a heart, too willing to extend himself to people, even to his own detriment. He’d been intending to present a prototype of the personal computer at the upcoming science convention alongside a work colleague, but he supposed he would just have to wait until next year; this took precedence. He couldn’t live with himself if he let someone die.

He set the phone on its cradle and sped into his lounge room, calling his sons name as he did. The toddler, barely managing to walk with those stubby little legs of his, wobbled his way across the carpet and over to his dad, grabbing at his pant legs excitedly. Fiddleford knelt to pull him into his arms. He set a big, sloppy kiss on his forehead, to which the toddle giggled and flailed.

The nanny smiled up at them both from her place on the carpet, surrounded by dinosaur toys. It looked like they’d built Tokyo out of blocks to knock down (Fiddleford was quite a big fan of Godzilla, and though he hadn’t let his son watch any movies, being as violent as they were, he had brought him foreign merchandise appropriate for a child his age). He was a chip off the ol’ block, his Tate.

“Maria, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m not going to needin’ your services for a while.”

Her smile dropped. “Is something wrong, Mr. McGucket?”

“No, no,” he said hurriedly, dropping down so Tate would be able to give her a proper goodbye. “Nothing at all. You’ve done a wonderful job. I’m just going to be visiting my parents for a while, and they’ll be happy to take care of Tate for me.” Tate had stumbled his way over to Maria and wound his arms around her shoulders. It made his heart warm to see his son be so affectionate with another person. He was going to have a lot of love to offer when he was older. “In fact, they haven’t seen him in quite a while, so I expect they’ll monopolize all his free time.”

“Oh, I see.” Her smile returned, her palm stroking between Tate’s shoulder blades. “I’ll see you both when you get back then, won’t I?” dislodging Tate, she tickled briefly beneath his pits, grinning as he squirmed and giggled. “You’ll be good for grandma and grandpa, won’t you?”

“Uh huh!” Tate replied enthusiastically.

“Enjoy your holiday, Maria. I’ll pay you a lil’ extra for this week.” He retrieved his son from the floor, sliding an arm beneath his legs. Tate immediately lay his against his clavicle. He bounced him a couple of times to elicit a giggle, and then continued, “You’ve been a real doll, Maria. I really can’t thank you enough for takin’ such good care of my boy.”

“I was my pleasure, Mr. McGucket. He’s such a well behaved boy.” Standing, Maria gave Tate a quick smeck on the cheek, ruffled his hair, and headed for the front door. “Have a fun trip!”

He and Tate waved until she was well out of sight. Tate was still waving when he turned, careful not to step on any of his toys as he headed for their shared bedroom. “Let’s get you packed,” he murmured, bouncing Tate on his arm. Tate murmured unintelligibly in only vaguely comprehending agreement.


End file.
